The "tariff case" is about more than tariffs

 The tariff case is about our form of government.

     -- Checks and balances

    --  Branches of government

   -- Whether, if a president claims it, he has dictatorial power.

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the tariff case. 

You can listen in, beginning at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time. The arguments start at 7:00 a.m.

Click here

I find the oral argument hard to follow because the ideas come so fast, but I am going to try. Fortunately, later today the Court will put up a transcript of the proceedings. Click here.

I try to avoid the widespread tactic of claiming catastrophe. It is a form of clickbait. I consider it "cheating." If everything is a superlative, if everything is the end of the world shouted at the top of ones lungs, then nothing is. Trump does this. Fox News does this. I don't want to do it.

If the U.S. had a "normal" president, then the tariff case would be an abstract, theoretical exercise. An argument can be made that placing a tariff on imports from a country -- like placement or withdrawal of military bases or refusing to sell advanced weapons -- is a tool of foreign policy. The Constitution gives the commander-in-chief power to the president. 

If the U.S. had a "normal" president, then the issue of what constitutes an "emergency" or what constitutes a condition of armed warfare would again be an abstract, theoretical exercise. A "normal" president would feel some shame about claiming alternative realities, and would start with a premise that Congress has a role to play. A president who felt some need to respect the truth and traditional boundaries of presidential power would create nibbles at the margins of power between the branches of government. The outcome would be part of the ongoing push and pull of government over the two-plus centuries of constitutional government. It would not be a catastrophe, which ever way it got resolved.

But President Trump isn't "normal."

He has successfully intimidated into submission the GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. The "ambition countering ambition" idea of Federalist 51 has become irrelevant. Congress is being steamrolled and the GOP majority isn't insisting on exercising its independence. 

But the real problem is Trump himself. Trump's character. Trump uses flagrant, dishonest pretexts to turn anything into the special conditions that allow the executive to exercise power. If everything is war, then everything is the executive's to control: taxation, spending, war powers, domestic law enforcement and prosecutions, possession of ballot boxes, martial law -- i.e., a totalitarian state. This president has shown that he does not respect boundaries. The strong take what they can and the weak suffer as they must.  

Who is to say that the emperor has no clothes? 

Who is to say that Trump's assertions of the power to enact tariffs is flagrant pretext --  at this moment in oral argument  (7:12 a.m.) with his attorney claiming that tariffs raise revenue is now just "incidental,"  that all they really want is the ability to control foreign policy?

The Supreme Court is there to say. Maybe they will say it. Maybe they will see all of Trump's contradictory assertions. I heard Trump's lawyer just now claim that tariffs are "a forward-facing regulation of foreign commerce." (7:14 a.m.) Forget what Trump previously argued about all the glorious revenue the tariffs raised. 

Maybe the Supreme Court will put the brakes on Trump. This is the time to do it. If they do not, then Trump will be able to do whatever he chooses to do. They will have accepted Trump's argument that anything that Trump says is a war power is, in fact, a war power, and therefore Trump's authority to do. That opens the floodgates. Trump's desire to accumulate power is boundless. We saw that on January 6, 2021.

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